Seeking to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Mexico City to discuss a range of bilateral issues, such as trade and economic growth, increasing higher education collaboration, and security cooperation.

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The first High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC) drew to a conclusion last week in Mexico. Many coming into the meeting were somewhat confused about how it would play out. The chairman of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) development assistance committee, Erik Solheim, a leading progressive voice in official development circles for some years, admitted in his closing speech that he, too, had been nervous about the meeting.

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Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto Tuesday opened the first High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, attended by some 1,500 international leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

At the opening of the two-day event in Mexico City, Pena Nieto said, “Mexico, as host country of this first meeting, seeks to promote dialogue and the building of accords between different government and non-governmental agencies to strengthen and promote efficient cooperation for development.”

Ban also addressed the gathering, urging the international community to earmark more national resources and financing to cut poverty and reach the UN-sponsored Millennium Development Goals ( MDGs) by the preset deadline, 2015.

Twenty years after their countries signed a landmark regional trade agreement, the presidents of the United States, Mexico and Canada will meet this week to attempt to strengthen the economic ties envisioned in that pact, correct the omissions and find ways to expand.

Trade and commerce are expected to dominate the agenda when President Obama meets with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts — President Enrique Peña Nieto and Prime Minister Stephen Harper — in the Mexican city of Toluca, just west of Mexico City, on Wednesday.

Mexico Institute Director Duncan Wood and Associate Christopher Wilson responded to the U.S. Department of Commerce Federal Register Notice published on November 25, 2013, which requested stakeholder input on the U.S.‐Mexico High Level Economic Dialogue (HLED)

In their comments, they noted that Mexico and the United States share an economic space and an economic future, and that the HLED is an important and potentially fruitful element in moving that future forward and maximizing the benefits for both countries. They stated that it should be both consolidated through high‐level engagement and institutionalization, and broadened to include a greater dialogue with the private sector and civil society and an expanded focus on border affairs.

U.S.-Mexico relations have been dominated for the past six years by efforts to address drug trafficking and organized crime-related violence. This was the right thing to do while violence spiked in Mexico, but with a new administration in office after the swearing in of President Enrique Peña Nieto over the weekend, the time has come to re-balance the bilateral relationship.

Current U.S. drug policy is proving insufficient in shrinking the damage caused by drug abuse, but promising alternative approaches could lead to improved results, according to an article in the summer 2012 edition of Issues in Science and Technology…

According to an article by Christopher Wilson of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, many feared in the early 1990s that the North American Free Trade Agreement would result in business and jobs moving from the United States to Mexico. But the reality is that economic cooperation with Mexico has been a boon for U.S. industry and has strengthened the country’s competitive position in ways that have produced broad economic benefits. Today, Wilson argues that expanding economic cooperation with Mexico is one of the best ways for the United States to improve its global competitiveness.